Good Green News from the Nordics presented in Berlin

Since 2021, Nordisk Film & TV Fond (NFTVF) has organised theme years in order to focus on industry issues that need to be dealt with on a pan-Nordic level. The 2023 theme year Nordic Green started off with a green summit in Berlin, co-organised with the Nordic Film Commissions at their Berlinale event Nordic Monday.

All the Nordic countries had delegates in the room during the summit, but the number was limited in order to keep it effective. The participants were green experts or decision-makers from the Nordic film institutes, broadcasters (public and private), streaming services, film commissions, and producers’ associations.

The summit resulted in an action plan, and soon afterwards the Nordic Green Action Group was founded, in order to make things happen. Since 2023, NFTVF has regularly summoned the Action Group, whose members today are from the Swedish and Norwegian film institutes, the Icelandic Film Centre, TV 2 (Denmark), TV4 (Sweden), NRK, Yle, and the producers association APFI (Finland).

Among pan-Nordic activities achieved since then are the Nordic green pledge for film commissioners, Nordic educational schemes, and the development of a shared green standard for Nordic films and series. In late 2023, guest speaker Katharina Retzlaff from the German Federal Film Board discussed with the Action Group the requirements and the experiences of the, at the time fresh, German standard. The plan for a pan-Nordic standard is largely based on this German model.

At this week’s Nordic Monday in Berlin, the pan-Nordic green work was presented to an international audience for the first time. Liselott Forsman, CEO at Nordisk Film & TV Fond, and Solveig Sigmond Ræstad, President of Nordic Film Commissions, introduced the pan-Nordic collaboration processes, after which the first version of the Nordic Ecological Standard (NES) was presented by Patrik Axén, Production Controller and Sustainability Coordinator at the Swedish Film Institute and a member of the Nordic Green Action Group.

The Nordic film institutes, which today collaborate under the name The Five Nordics, are investing actively in the fresh pan-Nordic green efforts. Both the 2024 Green Consultant Course and the NES development survey, conducted by the Danish company Footprint, are co-financed by the film institutes and NFTVF.

With Axén as the driving force, NES is currently being discussed with production companies, broadcasters and other Nordic players. The audience in Berlin responded very positively to the initiative, as its development continues.

Simultaneously, NFTVF’s 2025 theme year Animation Collaboration is up and running. Currently, NFTVF is conducting dialogues on pan-Nordic actions with a broad spectrum of Nordic animation professionals. The theme of one of these dialogues is sustainability.

NFTVF theme years:

2021: Documentary
2022: 20-something
2023: Nordic Green
2024: Talent in the Age of AI
2025: Animation Collaboration